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McDonald’s Self-Order Kiosks an Answer to Demand for $15 an Hour

The ‘Fight for $15’ movement at McDonald’s and other fast-food restaurants is having an effect that the protesters probably didn’t count on. The demands for $15 an hour or a ‘living wage’ have motivated McDonald’s to begin mass deployment of self-order kiosks. I first wrote about these kiosks four years ago when they were in the testing phase and, apparently, they’ve been a huge success.

OK Politechs – These are automated cashiers. That’s right, these machines will take your order and your payment, but never walk off the job to demand more money, never talk back to management, never want an extra smoke break and never call in sick. The testing in Romeoville will answer some important questions for McDonald’s – Will the public want to use them? Can they perform the necessary functions while being user-friendly? Are they cost-effective?

To be cost-effective they need only cost less to purchase and maintain than the wages paid to a human. An […] → Keep reading

McDonald’s Answer to ‘Living Wage’ Demands

It is beyond me how people can think the minimum wage should be increased anywhere from forty to two hundred percent, depending on who you listen to, and that prices would not go up along with the wage hike. Do people truly believe that business owners just have so much extra cash lying around that they can increase wages that much and just absorb the extra cost without passing it along to their customers? Or by cutting back on the number of employees?

Well it seems the wage complainers, protests and strikes have been noticed at the corporate offices and some relief may be on the way – for the businesses. Fast food employees who walked off the job and picketed for a ‘living wage’ may soon regret their decision to do so.

In Romeoville, Illinois, there is a McDonald’s restaurant right next to what McDonald’s calls their “Innovation Center.” New items, procedures, equipment and technology are tested at the […] → Keep reading

The Job Killing Minimum Wage Increase

The big push by the Democrats to increase the minimum wage is designed to do two things: Placate the lower income class, who already mostly support the Democrats, and make the unions happy. But in reality, increasing the minimum wage is nothing but a job killer. Obama and the Democrats tout an increase from $7.25 to $10.10 an hour and Obama has announced he will be issuing an executive order setting the minimum wage for workers covered by new federal contracts to $10.10 an hour. What he neglects to tell anyone, however, is that this will only affect around ten percent of the 2.2 million federal contract workers, since most already make more than $10.10 an hour. Also, it won’t take effect until 2015 and will only affect new federal contracts, not existing ones. All in all, it is not the big change that Obama is making it out to be.

Obama isn’t the only one advocating for an […] → Keep reading